In one of Longfellow's notes he alludes humorously to the autograph nuisance:--"Do you know how to apply properly for autographs? Here is a formula I have just received, on a postal card:
"'DEAR SIR: As I am getting a collection of the autographs of all honorable and worthy men, and think yours such, I hope you will forfeit by next mail. Yours, etc.'"
And of that other nuisance, sitting for a portrait, he laughingly wrote one day: "'Two or three sittings'--that is the illusory phrase. Two or three sittings have become a standing joke." And yet how seldom he declined when it was in his power to serve an artist! His generosity knew no bounds.
When a refusal of any kind was necessary, it was wonderful to see how gently it was expressed. A young person having written from a western city to request him to write a poem for her class, he said: "I could not write it, but tried to say 'No' so softly that she would think it better than 'Yes.'"
He was distinguished by one grace which was almost peculiar to himself in the time in which he lived--his tenderness toward the undeveloped artist, the man or woman, youth or maid, whose heart was set upon some form of ideal expression, and who was living for that. Whether they possessed the power to distinguish themselves or not, to such persons he addressed himself with a sense of personal regard and kinship. When fame crowned the aspirant, no one recognized more keenly the perfection of the work, but he seldom turned aside to attract the successful to himself. To the unsuccessful he lent the sunshine and overflow of his own life, as if he tried to show every day afresh that he believed noble pursuit and not attainment to be the purpose of our existence.
In a letter written in 1860 Longfellow says:--
"I have no end of poems sent me for candid judgment and opinion. Four cases on hand at this moment. A large folio came last night from a lady. It has been chasing me round the country; has been in East Cambridge and in West Cambridge, and finally came by the hands of Policeman S---- to my house. I wish he had waived examination, and committed it (to memory). What shall I do? These poems weaken me very much. It is like so much water added to the Spirit of Poetry."